wet temples

we'd heard there were floods in northern thailand, but little did we know that the same thing was happening in cambodia:

in fact, just a stone's throw from here, 200 tourists had to be rescued by helicopter from a flooded temple. did you hear that??? lifted by helicopter! holy crap.

but i'm getting ahead of myself here... just to make things clear, cathy and i have dubbed ourselves the BMs - budget masters. traveling for 2 months on a shoestring budget requires some self control, and we ooze it. no more $15 bus tickets, no way, you ain't highballing the BMs again, i tell you what. this means that even sometimes we have to eat fast food instead of the local cuisine:

cathy is so happy. (truth be told subway was actually relatively pricey but we just wanted it sooo bad we declared a BM value hiatus)

i am so happy because i am getting such a good deal.

so after our amazing BM hiatus, we flew to phnom penh, cambodia. this is the first thing we saw and it kinda grossed us out:

we got high balled by the girl at the bus station, and bought $15 bus tickets to siem reap (where we now reside). later, in talking with a very nice man named mr. keo at a tourist agency, we found out the tix should have been more like $7. so now we are extra determined to get good deals wherever we go.

but we were only in phnom penh for a few hours - we gotta get to siem reap to see them temples of angkor wat! we figured we would sleep on the bus from phnom penh to siem reap... HA! stupid americans! the bus ride was like being on the back of a bucking bronco. we sat there and closed our eyes and slept for about 3% of the 6 hour ride, to arrive in totally flooded siem reap at about 2:30 in the morning.

but it ain't no thang for the BMs sucka, we thrive on discomfort and deals. (i know it wasn't a deal, shut up.)

so we've spent the last couple of days exploring angkor wat, angkor thom, and lots of other temples, and just had our minds blown by the totally radical scenery:

we were perhaps most fascinated by the places where trees decided to co-mingle with the temples. more down below.

such intricate detail, and such grand scale. literally awesome.

these little fellas kept trying to steal bananas from the woman selling bananas to tourists to feed the monkeys.

mother nature ain't nothing to ef with.

i am so tiny.

this morning we got up at 4:30 to see the sunrise, cuz it is supposed to be one of those life changing-ly beautiful experiences. but oh you sneaky little cambodian clouds, you had something else in mind, now didn't you:

"look, there's the sun. isn't it the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"

it's been raining all day, so we've been lounging, surfing the intrawebs, watching rugby on TV, reading, and now i can say that i've also been blogging. well how about that. actually a ridiculously enjoyable and relaxing day. tomorrow we're back to phnom penh for a night, then it's off to vietnam. BMs locked and loaded.

love to you,

josey

p.s. here are some bonus shots from thailand that might make you wet yourself: